Could Nokia's deal with Bounteous x Accolite kickstart 5G API use?
The consultancy will use Nokia's NAC platform to develop 5G APIs
Analysts still think it could take several years before these APIs take off
5G APIs are at a standstill. Operators are waiting for developers to get on board. Developers are waiting for operators to expose their network capabilities. Nokia thinks it has the answer to get everyone moving in the right direction: a new deal with consultancy Bounteous x Accolite.
“To get operators to make really firm commitments, they wanna see that there’s API developers out there making applications, but the API applications folk are like, ‘hey, we’re waiting for the operators,'" Daryl Schoolar, analyst at Recon Analytics, told us on a phone call. "So it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg situation, both of them are waiting for the other one."
So, Nokia is going out and getting developers onboard that they can then bring to the operators, Schoolar added. By working with Bounteous x Accolite, Nokia is aiming to develop APIs for healthcare, gaming and more using the vendor’s Network as Code (NaC) platform, analysts told Fierce.
APIs are essentially channels between programs to allow them to ‘talk’ to each other, and 5G was designed with this kind of internetworking in mind. The 5G core uses APIs to enable various billing and traffic management tasks, while network slicing and multi-access edge computing (MEC) both utilize this API technology.
Today, availability of these APIs varies between providers, and operators have been somewhat leery of jumping on the 5G API bandwagon. Indeed, it took a good four years of 5G before network slicing really became a reality in most of the world.
Schoolar noted that any Bounteous x Accolite/Nokia 5G APIs for the healthcare industry could be based on existing security and authorization 5G APIs from the Linux Foundation's CAMARA project.
Nokia is still behind Ericsson in getting operators to adopt 5G APIs, Leonard Lee, executive analyst at neXt Curve, told Fierce. Ericsson's Vonage division notably inked an API deal with Verizon in February.
“Nokia has a bit of catching up to do. Tapping [Bounteous x Accolite] is a good way to get traction and expand their developer community,” said Lee.
Shake your money maker
Both Lee and Schoolar think it could be some time before APIs really come to the fore as a money-making element of 5G networks.
“The fact that the industry continues to refer to this effort as a ‘5G API’ ecosystem, market, solution, etc., tells me there is inevitable soul searching yet to be done. My sense is that the industry is still in the early phases of figuring out this so-called 'API game,'” Lee said.
Schoolar noted that if there are revenues to be made from APIs, then developers will take a larger chunk of that cash than operators will make. "When I last surveyed, most people were like, ‘we don’t think we’ll see any commercial benefit for 2 or 3 years,’” he said.
“That might be optimistic. This may not take off till we get close to 6G, or we get to 6G,” the analyst concluded.
6G, remember – despite many breathless media and analyst reports – is still at least six years away from commercial deployment.